For those of you who love writing, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, starts at midnight tonight, in a little more than eight hours from now. I'm participating for the first time ever, and while the prospect of writing a 50,000 word novel is tantalizing, I'm very nervous.
Scatter-brained as I am, I had a fully-fledged story idea in mind a few weeks ago...and then it waltzed away. I mean, I still have all the characters and the basic gist...I just don't quite know where to start. Writers are notoriously never satisfied with their own writing, and this is so very true for me. I'm a compulsive perfectionist, so the idea of writing and writing without reviewing or revising any of it is scary, to say the least.
I'm going to try and outline some of my story idea (tentatively titled "Within and Without") here, for anyone who's remotely interested:
-This world is a hybrid between Medieval serfdom and futuristic America, but don't assume this is completely sci-fi.
-Everyone in this particular gated community, Nad, has white-blonde hair and gray eyes and pale skin
-Well, not everyone. Sometimes, children are born with jet-black hair, and occasionally some are born with freckles. This is rare and considered undesirable. Many (such as the mother of Myra - the main character) dye their hair to hide it.
-Recently, some have been developing a...condition. The eyes of some people have changed from the pleasent gray to a bloodred.
-Along with the red eyes has come some...tension. The weather patterns in the area have fluctuated violently, as often as once every five minutes. A few younger children are being pulled out of school, and their parents are talking about a disease that causes "blindness."
-The story follows an adolescent named Myra, the daughter of the head of law enforcement in Nad. Not only does she have black hair, but at the age of six her eyes turned crimson. She has been home-schooled since. In public, she wears black glasses and feigns blindness.
-One day shortly before her eyes changed color, in the market Myra saw a blonde, freckly boy with one eye gray and one eye red. A decade later, she is sure he has died on the streets.
-To escape the boredom of her home, Myra slips out to the market and assists the butler in the selling of her mother Camilla's apples. Here, she sells a bushel to a young man, and only as he leaves does his scarf slip and show her his left red eye and right gray. Not a minute later, a blonde toddler picks a fight with a passive brunette baby boy, and in the end the black-haired one gets slapped. This sends Myra into a nose-dive.
-That night, as Myra packs a bag to run away, Camilla seeks her out and hands her a bottle of bleach. Myra realizes her mother has been like her all along.
-The butler helps Myra abscond, but as soon as she's out of the house, the world overwhelmes her.
-Just on time, the boy with heterochromia, Lin, finds her and leads her out of the gates. No one ever leaves the community.
-The rest of the story is the journey Myra, Lin, and Cass (a 25-year-old rebel leader from Nad with black hair, red eyes, and freckles) make to the red-eyed holding and their discoveries as they battle their powers and themselves.
So yeah. Wish me luck. :)
-Hannah
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